It’s not your imagination. Zoom or virtual presentations do suck both figuratively and literally. They sap energy and magnify flaws. Presenting online is challenging. What might you do to improve? Understand the challenges, adapt your presentation delivery, and enhance your skills.
Your Intended Message is the podcast about how we communicate – mistakes we can avoid and how we can communicate more effectively.
Think about the last time you had a message go wrong. You didn’t know why. The receiver of your message didn’t get it or they reacted weirdly and you had no idea what their problem was. That’s the challenges that this podcast will address. Every week, I’ll interview experts on different aspects of communication skills.
Imagine your success when you consistently deliver more effective presentations. You can do that when you develop the habits of effective public speakers. Success in any pursuit is the result of establishing smarter habits. Study and adopt these five habits of effective public speaking.
What’s a negative trigger word? That’s a word or phrase that derails your message by sending your audience off on a tangent. That might be an intellectual tangent or an emotional tangent. It’s the emotional tangents that are most destructive because it’s almost impossible to get your audience back after you trigger their emotional tangent.
Questions are much more engaging than statements. Use questions throughout your presentation to keep your audience interested. Sprinkle these three types of questions within your presentation to make it feel more like a conversation instead of a lecture. Use all three types of questions and you’ll keep your audience actively engaged during your presentation.
The chat encourages people to think. What could be a higher form of engagement than that? The chat offers you as the meeting leader or presenter benefits that you can’t enjoy in a live presentation. You will tend to get a higher percentage of your audience actively contributing because there are those who prefer not to speak up but find it easier to write a short chat. It feels safer to chat then to speak.
Heath Ledger, as the Joker, delivered that line in the Batman movie, The Dark Knight. The Joker delivered that line as he explained the permanent smile on his face. Why so serious?
You control the message you send, and you can make it more successful when you understand the filters and adapt your message to successfully pass through the filters unchanged.
These are the challenges you face with your intended message.
Use rhetorical questions during your presentation to better engage your audience. This technique is simple and powerful. It’s surprising that more speakers don’t make better use of this technique.
This works especially well, when delivering detailed technical information. That means this is an effective technique for engineers, scientists, economists, IT experts, and other technical specialists.
Those opening moments of your presentation are critical to establish your credibility and confidence with the audience. Don’t waste that time trying to work up your confidence. Instead, start with confidence and convey that with your first words. You owe that to your audience before you can expect them to listen to your presentation.
